Litvinenko moment

A nasty little nugget, retrieved from the acres of Skripal coverage. when Litvinenko was murdered in London, his dad Walter was in Italy, furious at the Putin regime which had ordered the killing. But years later Walter's back in Russia, sitting on a sofa in a TV studio with Lugovoi, one of the men responsible. they're chatting amiably, and shaking hands, so that the Russian viewers can clearly see that the whole thing was a nasty plot, made up by the West to smear the motherland. (Remind you of any recent coverage?). So what exactly went on to persuade Walter to change his mind? We may never know, but all the guesses are deeply unpleasant. There are no restrictions or limits to get in the way of the main objective - making Putin look good. 

Russian doping

Well, why not? Might as well call a spade a spade. I'd had a sense of Russia getting away with stuff on the doping front, slightly reinforced by odd asides as part of the Winter Olympics coverage. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes, and the whole picture is dazzlingly clear.

And what makes the difference? Watching the Netflix documentary Icarus, that's what. It's one of those quirky autobiographical documentaries which starts as as something completely different, but then becomes rivetting as a whole new story unravels before your disbelieving eyes. Ryan Gilbey is a keen amateur cyclist and film-maker, who gets intrigued by the possibility of training himself in the illegal use of drugs to improve his performance - if he can do it, starting from scratch, then surely anyone can. First he gets an American expert to help him, who then gets second thoughts, because this might harm his professional profile, but as a parting gift he puts Ryan in touch with Grigory Rodchenko...

Who just happens to be the mastermind behind Russian Olympic doping. They develop an odd kind of jokey friendship, until things start to unravel. WADA is looking into doping, and seriously investigating what the Russians do. Rodchenko is under pressure, but also scared that he may get ditched as a scapegoat (it has happened before. He got locked up in an asylum, and was only released because Putin's mate needed him to come out and run the programmme. So maybe it's safer to go to the Us...but should he help prosecute the Russians, or try to protect himself by going to the press? It's confused, fascinating and scary, but on the way it provides absolutely total proof that this was a watertight, state-approved programme of deceit, on a massive scale. anyone who thinks that the Russians are the victims of political pressure, or have suddenly cleaned up their act with miraculous precision, is kidding themselves.    

Hard Sun hubris

Yes, it's official. As a TV viewer I am hard to please. Starting off with a clutch of half a dozen drama series that looked promising, I've watched almost all of them come apart. This weekend I thought I'd do my duty and finish off watching Hard sun, although I had serious misgivings. It started off - promisingly - being about the end of the world. then it diverted onto much more predictable serial killer territory, and then in the final episode it did a sudden sharp turn towards assisted suicide and weird transformation of victims who seem to have been lobotomised.

Through it all our intrepid central pair of sexy pin-ups charge remorseless, apparently unfettered by any connection with the organisation for whom they work, and immune from the threatening secret services they've openly defied. And then there's their private lives. She has a psychotic son who wants to kill er, and several episodes ago was about to have sex with a reporter, but she's completely forgotten about all that. He's a loving, kind, obsessive parent - except he isn't, and has been cheating on his wife with the widow of the colleague he killed way back when.     

It's a mess. entirely unconvincing, and streets behind series like Spiral or Before We Die, which aren't models of plausibility but do have some kind of integral consistency, their own heightened world we can sort of believe in. But Neil Cross, apparently, not waiting to see how the customers react, is planning to write another four series of this stuff. Isn't it time for somebody, somewhere, to "take back control"?   

Kiri

A few weeks back, I was raving about the dramatic increase in the quality of TV drama. Oh dear. One by one, they disappoint me, settle for the easy cops and robbers route, simplify the issues, let characters lose all consistency and the plot lose plausibility - so long as it makes a good Tv moment. Cos we're peasants, and we'll settle for anything, right?

The saddest betray of all was Kiri, which in moments was a stunning look at what social workers do and what they have to put up with. But the denouement was all over the place. (SPOILER ALERT: if you haven't watched it but plan to, look away here.)

Kiri has been illegally taken off by her biological father, from whom she then got separated, and killed by persons unknown. In the last episode, it turns out she was killed by her adopted dad, who couldn't bear that she was going off with her biological dad after all they'd done for her. Only snag is, biological dad knows nothing about this. He told the police that he and his daughter got separated, and he was looking for her all over. If they'd agreed to go off together, surely he'd be sitting outside her house, engine running, waiting for her to skip into the car.

If I pick this up on one viewing, surely they could afford to have somebody (unpaid amateur playwright like me, for instance) to go through the script looking for implausibilities, before they spend thousands on spurious political demonstrations that they don't need?      

Quality TV

Having moaned at Christmas about the dross that was on offer from mainline TV channels, it's only fair to say that in the New Year things have picked up considerably. As I trawl through the week's offerings, planing my viewing, there's a lot more that's worth a look than there used to be. Drama - McMafia, Hard Sun, Next of Kin, Kiri, Girlfriends. Varied, not everyone's taste, and by no means perfect - but each crafted with a fair bit of care and intelligence, so that you don't feel insulted as soon as you start to watch. Documentaries - House of Saud, A House through Time, Working class White Men, Great Art. Again,very varied, but I've not given up on any of them, and I'm told that i'm hard to please. And then there's one off treats like the GBS bio, or next week's offering on James Joyce, not to mention Inside No. 9, which on the basis of two episodes is looking unmissable. Grab it while you can; it may not last.   

Howards End

Slim pickings on TV most nights, but that makes the exceptions even more valuable. The BBC series of Howards End, on four successive Sundays, has been a real treat. It's partly that the extra allowance of time gives room for development and subtlety. There's not the sense of pressure that you often get as a 300 page novel is rammed into 120 minutes of screen time. The acting's been terrific, especially of the Schlegel siblings, but there's also the intelligence of the script. After You Can Count on Me and Manchester by the Sea Kenneth Lonergan was already one of my favourite people in film, but here he's brilliantly self-effacing. He's quoted as saying that 75% of the script is pure Forster, but it's a very carefully selected 75%. Last time I read Howards End I found it much heavier going than watching this series. And the remaining 25% is impossible to spot - it feels smooth and seamless, but never shallow. Then there's those trademark Lonergan moments, where characters are filmed at social events talking to each other, and you can't hear what they're saying but you know exactly what is going on. Sheer magic.     

Where do you get your news?

Key question these days, but one I saw differently this week, through sheer accident. I was in the dining room, watching the BBC ten o'clock news. It was telling me about a deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh, who'd just agreed that Myanmar would take back refugees, that Bangladesh would return them, and everything would be fine. After what's gone on, that was hard to believe. It was also hard to believe that Bangladesh got anything out of this worth having. Were we supposed to think better of them, for washing their hands of people in trouble?

But then I needed to make a drink so I moved into the kitchen, and switched on radio 4. Same story, but with a crucial bit of background added. On the radio version, the deal was arranged by China. They bullied Bangladesh into accepting it, despite the fact that it didn't include provisos for which Bangladesh had asked. Pure muscle, making something happen because they wanted to contrive the appearance of an agreement which wasn't actually there and would make no appreciable difference to those at the sharp end. But radio listeners get to hear information which doesn't make it on to the TV screen.   

Trump

I wasn't sure I could take more of Trump, but the four-part Channel f series tracing his entire career has been really good. Not outraged or emotional, just a calm tour through the key developments, through the eyes of a range of people who were there at the time - some of them very close. There's friends, colleagues and enemies, and some who moved from one category to the other. there's moments early on when he seems almost like a normal, decent guy, but then the urge to own and to buy takes over, and he loses control. He has two thriving casinos in Atlantic city, but then the Taj Mahal comes on the market. He has to have it. It's the biggest there is, so he has no choice. Except that all financial experts are confident that he's bound to make a loss, and they're right. He sells it, wriggles out of contracts, leaves local businesses unpaid. but none of that worries him a scrap, because he's on to the next big thing. 

the same, apparently, applies to his women and his wives. He sets up Ivana as the manager of one of these casinos, and she's very successful. Tough and ruthless, maybe, but a hard and thorough worker. There's fascinating footage of a big night where she's the boss and he's the appendage - and he hates it. He really suffers, to be at a big occasion where he's not the centre of attention. No, it won't change my opinion of him, but it isn't half filling in the detail.  

Boy with a Topknot

I read one of Satnam Sanghera's memoirs, and heard him speak at a conference in Durham. I think he's a really sharp, intelligent writers, and he's interestingly different in arguing for the benefit of having a day job. Unlike almost any other writer you're heard of, he actually doesn't want everything in his life to be dependent on his writing.

So I was looking forward to the TV drama based on his account of his estrangement from his Sikh background, in parallel with his belated discovery that both his father and sister were suffering from depression. That would have been quite enough, because he explores that development with tough honesty, ready to acknowledge the ways in which he's been selfish and blind.

But of course that isn't enough. We couldn't end up with grim truths and hard-won wisdom. We have to have the cute romantic finish, the phone-call from Wolverhampton station with the girlfriend who's - look! just behind him - and happy-ever-after before the credits can roll. Richard Curtis has a lot to answer for.  

Guess who?

"All of this 'Russia' talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!...Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary and the Dems the focus???? also, there is NO COLLUSION."

You guessed it. Not a teenager letting off steam, but the leader of the free world. He doesn't want to run the country, he wants to re-run the campaign - having a five star general leap on to the stage shouting "Lock her up!" is the best fun he's had in years. 

But it's not funny. A sober reminder of the personal costs of this stuff in last night's Storyville documentary coming Home, about an American soldier who left his unit, was held and tortured by the Taliban for five years, and then returned to the US in a deal involving Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo. Because of Obama, and all the politics involved, Trump was on this in a flash, passionately telling rallies that six young, beautiful Americans had died trying to rescue this deserter, who in the old days would simply have been shot. and of course, they loved it, and are still yelling for this guy to be thrown into jail for the rest of his life. Army experts, used to debriefing prisoners who've been tortured, say this man's had worse treatment than anyone since Vietnam, and should not be in prison for a single day. Oh yes, and the progrramme aslo does the legwork, asks the questions, and sets the record straight: none of the six young men were actually searching for this soldier when they were killed. It made a great story, and he told it with passion. Just turns out not to be true.  

Ken Burns' Vietnam

So that's it. All over, just like that. A mere ten hours of compulsive watching, and we've done the Vietnam war. I remember, way back, watching the Ken Burns series on the American Civil War. A bit solemn, but so patient, and with wonderful photographs. The jazz was similarly good to look at, though a bit more controversial in terms of what he did and didn't cover, what kind of look-in contemporary music got. But Vietnam is safely distant in one sense, although - as the programme showed - in some cases the wounds still linger on. But the detail and the photos were stunning, and they've assembled an amazing array of witnesses - Americans, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, first hand accounts of what went on, from a range of angles. There is a sad, wise recognition that american exceptionalism has been a hugely expensive curse for the whole planet, let alone America, but although that wouldn't got down well in the White House for the rest of us it's long overdue. It's moving to watch people grow over the length of the war - how a loyal marine gradually becomes a vet against the war, and then witnesses John Kerry's astonishing testimony to congress about what the war has cost. Plus, of course, the astonishing soundtrack. We always said there was no time like the sixties, and here's the proof.   

Stewart on Lawrence

A real TV treat. To accompany the TV showing of Gertrude Bell's Letters from Baghdad, BBC4 have put out two one-hour episodes of Rory Stewart talking about the legacy of T.E.Lawrence.  It's been gorgeous - some fabulous photography of landscape and architecture, but also a detailed, clear analysis of what was going on in Lawrence's mind, and why that might matter now. And it's all done by a guy who idolised Lawrence as a kid, and then explored vast stretches of the middle East on foot, staying in bedouin tents. But also by someone who at a ridiculously young age was a governor in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who saw the idioocy of occupation in heartbeaking detail. as his conclusion spells out, it's tragic that the American military are encouraging their officers to study Lawrence - because he's a winner at fighting in the Middle East - whereas Lawrence himself would actually be telling them "don't do it better; don't do it at all." 

This series is from some time back - it shows Stewart walking thoughtfully through a Damascus souk - but I can't think how or why I missed it. Yet again, thank God for catch-up. 

Partition

There's been a ton of programmes about the India/Pakistan partition of 1947, almost all of them excellent. I feel substantially wiser, and grateful to all the people who've clearly taken this as an opportunity to invest time, thought and money in public education. Lord Reith, for once, might be smiling. Gurinder Chadha's "India's Partition:The Forgotten Story" was possibly the best of the lot, coming towards the end of the sequence, but offering a stunningly clear account of how different elements combined to produce this exceptionally bloody result. There was a lot of rather silly (apparent) toing and froing, from the UK to India, back to the UK and then to a different part of India, as though Chadha,, was jumping on and off various buses around London. But the quality of the programme was the expert witnesses it gathered to explain precisely what was going on, at each stage of the process, and from them we got the sense of how impersonal forces combined with individual personalities (Nehru, Gandhi and Jinna in particular, but also the Brits involved) to produce a toxic juggernaut which by the end was unstoppable - though it could certainly have been handled more wisely - i.e. by taking time, calculating likely consequences, rather than staying out of violent clashes and getting the hell out as fast as possible. There may be parts of our colonial record we should celebrate, but this isn't one of them. 

The State

You can't please some people any of the time. Peter Kosminsky spends a lot of time researching and then making the state, a drama in four parts, one hour each, shown on four successive nights. It's about Brits going to Syria in support of Isis. I thought it was fascinating, and really well done. A bit formulaic, heavily constricted by the need to get in tons of useful information that had been gathered, but not stupid or preachy, and light years ahead of most of the thinking that we get about Isis from politicians or the TV news. you could begin to understand why people like these could initially be attracted by some of what they hear, even if that - inevitably? - leads to later disillusion as they taste the grim and complex reality of what's involved. The Daily Mail was predictably scathing. Kosminsky was a white, middle-aged Oxbridge graduate - he hadn't actually been to Raqqa to find out for himself. Stuart Jeffies in The Guadrian wasn't much better: "Isis Drama fails to offer any answers on radicalisation." Oh right. That's why we watch plays, is it? So they'll give us the answers. Some days I think that if I could speak another language I'd emigrate.  

Hate and the Beautiful Game

It took me a while, but I finally caught up with Gareth Thomas' TV documentary about homophobia in English football. And it is that specific - there's a prominent gay American soccer player who's happy to have come out there, but wouldn't have done so here. And Thomas' own experience in British rugby (backed up by referee Nigel Owens) indicates that that's a much more civilised world in this respect. So Thomas goes looking for answers. He trawls through trolling on line, and listens to the abuse in the stands. He sees how some clubs are much better geared than others to combat it - Cardiff, for instance, have a well-trained team who will identify, remove and then ban fans who abuse black players - but would they be as vigilant about homophobic chants? As with Thomas' own case, it needs prominent players with the nerve to come out - and once that happens, they'll get backing from sponsors (great positive story) and some of the press. But before that happens, the powers that be need to get their act together, produce and then enforce a common pattern of resistance to open homophobia. Thomas tries. He really does. He works out a possible code of practice, with a supportive lawyer. He tries, endlessly, to make an appointment with one top official. He talks to another, gets a load of platitudes and good intentions, and comes out shaking his head "I don't know whether to laugh or cry." As a record of intelligence and determination confronting stupidity and inertia this is a wonderful programme; as an indication of the state of football, it's deeply depressing. 

Binge TV

It's all changed. Back in the day, I'd make a note of what I wanted to watch when, see in advance when commitments clashed with things I wanted to watch, and carefully set the video to record. Oh boy. those were the days.

Saturday night, I have the house - and the TV set - to myself. so I have four hours of solid viewing. an hour of Ozark, courtesy of Netflix. An hour of Top of the Lake:China Girl, which has just been launched, but launched with all six episodes available from the start, courtesy of iplayer. And then there's two episodes, back to back, of I Know Who You Are, thoughtfully transmitted on BBC 4.

Sheer luxury. and, sadly, all foreign. One American, one Australian, one Spanish. None of them perfect, but all stylish and compulsive, and streets ahead of recent Brit series I've sampled in hope and then given up on in despair - Fearless, In the Dark. Interesting ideas, promising starts, but  then they collapse in a tangle of implausible situations and ramped up hysteria.  

The Final Test

So that's it. All over. And nobody wins. But you can't complain, after three rugby matches of that intensity. I'm not a Sky subscriber, never have been, and probably never will be. But in a crisis I'm prepared to cadge, and my friendly neighbour Gary's been happy to oblige. that was for tests 1 and 2. For 3, as it happens, he's committed to a stall in Wenlock, and i'm collecting for amnesty in Newport, on the 11.00 am shift. So there's nothing for it - I'm driving to Newport at 7.30 am, so that I can be settled in the Pheasant before kick off at 8.30, can watch the whole game, and then go and rattle my tin on the streets.

What a game. Yes, the All Blacks had the chance, fluffed three tries and missed two very easy kicks. We didn't really get close to scoring - apart from an intercepted pass that nearly gave them a try - but we kicked our kicks, we made our tackles, and we held out the best team in the world. The two tries the all Blacks did score were truly clinical - they just see what needs to happen, and then do it, very fast - but the Lions didn't collapse, did hold together, and this was pure drama - all of us held together, daring to sustain the dream that we could - despite the odds, against all probability - survive. And thanks to canny Sam Warburton inviting the ref to look at the TMO, and eccentric Roman Poite reckoning that maybe it's accidental offside rather than the other kind, the Lions do scrape through. (See The Luck of the Draw in Poems from the News).   

Getting Over Brexit

Who's going to heal the wounds? Well, Grayson Perry, of course. He will chat up, collect photos from, a range of Leave and Remain voters. Then he'll put together two vases, which will contain the essence of the two sides, and bring them together in a finale of resolution. On a personal level it works well. He is possibly the most engaging interviewer on the whole of television, and his final coup - that if you ask Leave and Remain voters to send in photos of what they value, the results will be very similar - is clever and cheering.

But. But it isn't as simple as he implies. The deep bitterness among Remain voters is not just at the result. It's at the manner of the campaign - deceitful, calculating, demeaning. It's all very well to contrast Arron Banks and Gina Miller as emotion and reason, and say that Remain failed to find an emotional approach that resonated. True enough, but what was he looking for? "Follow LEAVE logic, and you end up killing Jo Cox?"  Arron Banks is personable and witty, but he also spent seven million pounds quite deliberately appealing to brute racism. Perry had one casualty of that, the single migrant in Boston brave enough to appear on camera, and he's still paying the cost. Is everything still OK, Grayson? I think not. 

Three Girls

I don't believe it. I raved at the start of this week about the great TV that was about to be screened, and left out one of the best bits. Three Girls, yet again, sounds appalling but wasn't. I wasn't even sure I'd fit in the time to see it, because there was so much else that I knew I wanted to watch. But then Saturday night arrived and there was nothing on, so I gave it a go - watch for ten minutes, see what it's like. I watched all three epidoes, back to back, over three hours. It's a  painful, patient account of the Rochdale Grooming case, focussing very closely on three girls, who were mates for a time but had very different experiences of and attitudes to what went on. The writing and the acting were stunning, with a heartbreaking analysis of exactly how and why various agencies failed to actually do anything useful to stop this abuse. Very closely based on meticulous research, this showed a police officer getting very close to victims of a crime, falling out with their superiors, and retaining strong links with the victims after they had left the service. Which is also exactly what happened in the final episode of Little Boy Blue, shown on Monday. If I were in the police, that's a coincidence that would worry me.  

Good TV

Oh wow. Just wow. Every week i make this list of what I want to watch on mainstream TV in the week ahead, and it's often very thin. But this week, for some reason, the schedules abound with riches. The last instalment of Little boy Blue, about the killing of a young Everton fan. Should have been deeply depressing, but was done with real sensitivity and conviction. Good documentaries on people facing death, and the historical roots of ISIS; again, don't sound cheerful, but both stimulating and well done. And then there's OJ Simpson:Made in America, five hours of quality documentary, shown an hour at a time over five successive nights. We haven't been spoiled like this for years, and it may never happen again, but I'll grab it while it lasts.